PHILOS 1D03 Lecture Notes - Substantivism
6 Dec 2013
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Document Summary
Common misconceptions about how technology changes peoples lives: we tend to focus on the big technology, we tend to focus on the direct effects. Artifacts define and regulate patterns of human behavior in the following ways: coercive compliance, sub-conscious compliance, opportunities and constraints, background conditions as imperatives, effecting non-users, communicative and cultural systems, altering society and macroscopic level. Guns do not define or regulate human behavior in a significant way: sclove disagrees with this claim. Its not just an instrument to achieve what we want it helps define and regulate what we pursue. Very few tech are designed to regulate human behavior. So why do most technologies do this: because they are polypotent. All artifacts are designed to perform a specific task, (this is a focal function/purpose) Vast majority of artifacts have many non-focal functions. Context: the same artifact can have different effect in different cultures.
